genshiken nidaime

I love Sue and her Meruru cosplay. I also love the artwork of the Atelier games, since two artists I had followed beforehand ended up doing official art for them.

I’ve always enjoyed both of Kishida Mel and Hidari‘s work. (They’re danbooru links, so.. NSFW.) It also feels weird having seen their really early stuff before they got involved with my favorite past time of video games. It’s like it doesn’t even feel special. Almost more of a strange “Yeah, that’s right. You guys finally hired good artists. Good job.” Not saying that professional artists I haven’t heard of aren’t good. But, yeah. I’m pretty much saying “I knew them before they got popular”. However, with the age of the internet, that’s pretty much anyone. My only source is danbooru. Which pretty much means that I still barely knew them, since they mostly collect published-on-internet images. They were probably professionals before I even started noticing their art around 6-8 years ago. All this, and I still haven’t bought any of the PS3 Atelier games yet.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about games. Actually, I haven’t talked about video games in forever.

If I were to mention one game right now, it’s Final Fantasy XIV. It’s one pretty game, and I remember when I first played the initial version before A Realm Reborn. It ran like shit. At first, I blamed it on my video card — a Radeon HD 4850 — which at the time was aging too fast for modern games. It became evident that FFXIV 1.0 was an inefficient power hog. I wanted to play it despite these drawbacks. I saw potential in the game. A simple a change of aesthetics compared to the western palate is also nice. It just suits me. ARR now plays and runs a helluva lot better than 1.0, yet has enough familiarity to FFXI that led me to play that game for nearly 6 years.

I’ve linked Hidari’s stuff before as well. It was a top image for one podcast episode where we were talking about Fractalé. If I remember correctly, it was his work that drew me towards Vocaloid. Seeing art that good about these “characters” that were voicebanks intrigued me. And as fate would have it, I’m now an owner of the English Hatsune Miku voicebank.

I don’t really have anything to say about Genshiken. If you’re watching it, you’re watching it. I could try to convince you, but I’ve already derailed this much, that I’d need another post for that typical “Watch this show! It’s good!” post.